VIFF11 REVIEW: Dernier étage gauche gauche [Top Floor, Left Wing] [2010]

“Hey, it’s pork. That’s provocation!” How do you turn a hostage situation concerning cocaine, eviction notices, and Algerian assassins into a stage for bureaucratic ineptitude and slum reform? Ask Angelo Cianci because his film Dernier étage gauche gauche [Top Floor, Left Wing] does it and more. A darkly comic take on generally serious circumstances, a normal day in the life of bailiff François Etcheveria (Hippolyte Girardot) becomes one he’ll never forget. The first apartment of twelve on his list to evict and catalogue property for compensation, no one could have…

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REVIEW: With Honors [1994]

“I’m ending our friendship” With Honors is one of those films that I remember enjoying back in the day, but never could recall what actually happened in it, let alone what it was about. Sure I knew that Joe Pesci played a bum attempting to show Brendan Fraser what life is all about, but that was pretty much it. Watching it again, probably more than ten years later, I can safely agree with myself from back then on how good of a movie it is. The acting is great and…

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